The Rules of Love & Grammar

by Mary Simses

I wonder if he can sense how much it still hurts me to talk about it this many years later. That there’s a physical ache in my chest. I picture her on that last night of her life, sitting on her bed, the movie poster from Titanic on the wall behind her. I remember thinking how ominous that poster looked—Jack and Rose, the movie characters, oblivious to the approaching tragedy. That was moments before Renny and I began arguing, just before she went out the door for the last time.

  “It happened on Crestwood,” I say as we climb higher into the hills.

  Mitch looks at me.

  “The accident. That’s where it happened. On Crestwood, close to Middle Road.” I hear a tractor in the distance, and I listen for the sounds of children, but the only noise is the sputter of the engine. “The kids from school left things at that place for weeks afterward. Flowers and teddy bears, crosses and letters.”

  “That’s so sad,” Mitch says.

  I run my finger over the dark spot on the apple and think about being in my room that Saturday night, trying on clothes, deciding what I was going to wear to see Peter the next day. The doorbell rang, and when I walked into the hall and looked down the stairs, I saw my mother open the door. It was dark outside, but the lanterns were on and the moths were fluttering. I could make out his blue uniform through the screen. Mrs. Hammond, I’m Lieutenant Belforth, Dorset Police Department. May I come in? I knew right away something had happened. It was right there in his voice.

  I toss the apple as far as I can, over the trees. A cloud drapes itself against the sun, turning the June afternoon gray, the air still.

  “I lost someone, too,” Mitch says. “I lost my mother. When I was four.”

  I stop walking. “She died when you were four?”

  “No, she didn’t die. She left us—my father and me.”

  I watch the breeze ruffle the grass ahead of us. “You mean she moved out?”

  “Yeah, so she could be with another guy.”

  I feel as though I’ve just kicked a rotted log and let loose a thousand bugs. “That’s terrible. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not,” he says, his voice empty of emotion. “My dad told me years later that she said she was hoping for a different life.”

  “What kind of life did she want?” How could a mother leave her four-year-old child?

  “I don’t know. The guy she ran off with was some small-time soap opera actor from New York. That’s all I know about him. He wasn’t any big deal, but I guess she thought he was something special.”

  “I can see why you’re not a fan of people in show business.”

  “That’s part of it.”

  “Did you see her after that?”

  Mitch bends to pick up a branch from the ground. It looks brittle, like something left behind by the winter. “No,” he says.

  “Not ever?”

  He shakes his head.

  “And you never heard from her?” I ask. “No phone calls? No letters? Email? Anything?”

  He snaps a piece off the branch and tosses it to the side of the path. “There were some letters. They started when I was older. Fifteen, I think.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Oh, you know. What you’d expect, I guess. She wanted to see me. I was young, I was immature. I don’t expect anything from you. I’d just like to meet my son. That kind of thing.”

  “And what did you say? What did you tell her?”

  He looks straight ahead, up the hill. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? You mean you didn’t answer?”

  “No. Why should I? She had her opportunity to be my mother, and she gave it up.”

  “I don’t know. It’s just—it’s not every day people ask for another chance. Or get one. Maybe you should give that to her.”

  “She doesn’t deserve another chance.” He flings the stick across the grass. “I used to think I missed having a mother. But you can’t miss what you never had.” He looks away, and I wonder if that’s how he really feels.

  We sit on the side of the path, by the trees, a dozen tiny apples on the ground around us. “I remember the first time I ate an apple right off a tree,” I say. “It was here, in these orchards. I was surprised how hard I had to pull to get it off the branch.”

  “What kind of apple was it?” Mitch asks. “Do you remember?”

  I look around, as though I might recognize the type of apple if I saw it again. “No, I don’t. It might have been a Cortland or an Empire. Or it might have been a regular old McIntosh. Whatever it was, though, I just bit right into it. Didn’t give a damn about washing it, like I would now.” I run my hand over the trunk of the tree beside me, feeling its rough texture, its knots. “That was a great apple. So crisp and sweet. So fresh. It wasn’t like any apple I’d ever eaten. I remember standing there, thinking, I will always remember the taste of this apple, as long as I live.”

  Mitch picks up one of the apples and turns it to reveal a blush of pink. “Those are great moments,” he says. His eyes are soft, quiet. A little piece of hair hangs over his forehead. “When you have this feeling that what’s happening is really special and you know you’ll always remember exactly what took place. Every detail.”

  “Yes.” I turn to him and smile. “That’s how it was.”

  Chapter 12

  An indefinite pronoun

  does not refer to any specific person, thing, or amount.

  Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.

  When I step outside the bike shop, the street is bustling with cars, kids on bikes and skateboards, and people darting in and out of stores. The flag by the door of Copper Kettle Cookware flutters in a warm breeze, sending shadows dancing on the building’s redbrick exterior.

  A few blocks up, there’s a huge group of people standing in the road, and my heart does a little dance, because I know they must be gathered there for Peter’s movie. I stride toward them, past the display of vintage decanters in the window of the liquor store and the claw-foot table and teapots in Laurie’s Antiques.

  I cross Leeward Avenue and walk another block. To the right, down Mason Street, half a dozen white box trucks and several movie-set trailers are parked. As I walk farther up Main Street, huge, round lights on stands and rectangular screens in black-and-white rise in the air like sails. There must be a hundred people in the street—joggers in spandex shorts, mothers holding the hands of children, men in business suits, college students, grandmothers. There’s an excited buzz going through the crowd, and it’s all about the movie. I got a selfie with Brittany Wells. I sat two tables down from Sierra Benson at the Sugar Bowl. My friend was an extra, and she got to say a line! I saw Herbert Tait at the bank, getting money from the cash machine!

  I peer over the heads of the people in front of me so I can see what’s going on, but I’m too far back, and I’m too short. “Excuse me,” I say as I begin to squeeze my way toward the front. Pushing through the crowd, I notice a number of women holding small, gold bottles, but it’s not until the cloying scent of jasmine hits me that I make the connection. It’s that perfume, Catch Me!, that fans are spraying around Sean.

  When I finally press through the mass of onlookers, I stop. I lean against the barricades set up by the crew and take in the scene. Cables snake up and down the street, and twenty men are moving equipment and arranging lights and metal stands. Two women are inside a huge trailer full of clothes, and a handful of people are hanging out by a little tent where food and drinks have been set up. Several twenty-somethings are scurrying around, most of them talking on cell phones and walkie-talkies. One guy, who must be a production assistant, stands guard on the other side of the barricades, a megaphone in his hand. To the far right is a cluster of director’s chairs, with the name By Any Chance printed across their blue canvas backs, and in front of the chairs are two video monitors on stands. The block doesn’t look like the Main Street I know. It’s been completely transformed.

  Halfway down the sidewalk there’s an old-fashioned clock with a big, round
face and a black iron stand. It looks just like the clock that was here on Main Street when I was young. And parallel parked by the curb is an old, red Toyota Camry. With its simple grille and plain wheels, the car seems boxy and antiquated, compared with the flashier, more curvaceous version of the model that’s on the road today. A silver Lincoln Continental is parked in front of the Camry. It reminds me of the car my aunt Cordelia used to drive, back in the nineties, when she’d come from Boston to visit us.

  “Look at the parking meters,” a man behind me says, and I notice that someone has placed trees in front of the electronic meters in order to disguise them, and put up the old, coin-operated silver meters, the kind with the rounded tops and glass windows and little arrows showing how many minutes remain.

  Several shops have been temporarily transformed to resemble businesses that long ago closed their doors. The Art Barn has been turned back into Zodiac, a store that used to sell trendy clothes, and the old, white house where Dorset Golf & Sportswear is located is once again Seaside Video. It seems strange that there ever was a place in town where you could rent DVDs and, before that, videotapes. A Shore Realty sign has been placed in front of the brick building where the paint-your-own-pottery studio is located, and I think about Alice Howe, a classmate of mine whose grandfather started the real estate company and ran it until he died.

  And then there’s the Sugar Bowl. Its blue and white striped awning is gone, one with yellow and white stripes having temporarily taken its place. And the sign I remember from my teen years is back: a red coffee cup with little, wavy steam lines rising to meet the words Sugar Bowl in hand-scripted letters above it. Outside the restaurant, huge lights and reflectors have been set up, and the windows are covered with what appears to be orange cellophane. Mitch was right when he predicted they would be filming in there.

  I feel as though I’ve stepped back in time, to the Dorset of my youth. I almost believe if I walked into Seaside Video, I’d be greeted by wall-to-wall shelves of DVDs and a little area by the counter stocked with popcorn and candy.

  I’m jostled by a woman standing next to me, dressed in gray sweatpants. “I think I’ll faint if I actually see Sean Leeds in person,” she tells her friend.

  “You’ll faint? I’ll faint,” the friend says. “I’d love to get his autograph on this.” She holds up a bottle of Catch Me! “My cousin’s wife’s sister, Eugenia, actually got his autograph.”

  “No!” the lady in sweatpants says.

  “Yes, but Eugenia didn’t have the perfume with her, so she had him autograph the bottom of her grocery list. And then her husband threw it out by mistake.”

  The sweatpants woman groans. “I would kill Gary if he did that.” She takes her Catch Me!, spritzes a shower of jasmine in the air, and they both laugh.

  My God. These women are talking about fainting just from seeing Sean, and I danced with him. He might have even kissed me if Peter hadn’t come in. I touch my fingertip to my lips, wondering what it would have felt like. If anybody fainted, it should have been me, and it should have been then. But Sean just seems so nice and normal, like a regular guy who just happens to be in the movies, exactly the opposite of what Mitch would call a Hollywood phony.

  A woman nearby whines, “I can’t believe we’ve been here for four hours.”

  I turn and take in her short, blond hair and perfectly plucked eyebrows. She’s wearing a silk blouse and a chunky gold necklace, and she’s standing with another woman, dressed in a Pucci top and carrying an oversized Prada handbag. These must be two of the ladies who keep the new spa in business.

  “You’ve been waiting for four hours?” I ask the one with the eyebrows. “To see Sean Leeds?”

  She checks her watch. “Yes. Four hours and ten minutes, to be exact.”

  “Four and a half,” says her friend. “I got here before she did.” Then she adds, “But it’ll be worth it if we get to see him.”

  Four and a half hours, just to get a glimpse of Sean. Wow.

  “How about you?” the eyebrow woman asks me.

  “I just got here.”

  “And how long are you planning to wait?” Pucci top asks.

  “Wait? Oh, I’m not going to wait.”

  Pucci top gives me a curious look. “Then what are you doing here if you’re not waiting to see Sean Leeds?”

  I lean in and lower my voice. “I’ve been invited to watch the filming.”

  “Invited?” they ask in unison.

  “I know the director,” I explain. “We’re old friends. Very close friends.” And then, because I can see how excited they are, I add in a half whisper, “I know Sean, too.”

  “You know the director and Sean Leeds?” Pucci says, so loudly that several people turn to stare at us.

  “Peter Brooks and I went to Dorset High together,” I tell her.

  “Fabulous!” Pucci says. “Can you get Sean to sign our perfume bottles?”

  Word begins to travel through the crowd. She knows Sean Leeds. Friend of the director. I can feel everyone looking at me, sizing me up, waiting for me to do something. And I guess I can. I’m the director’s…well, good friend. Very good friend. And, after that kiss, who knows what’s next? I could be on the way to becoming his girlfriend.

  Yes, I’m probably almost his girlfriend. It’s a great thought. Such a great thought, in fact, that for a moment I forget I’m standing outside the Sugar Bowl in Dorset, Connecticut. I imagine, instead, that I’m in front of a movie theater on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, my arm linked firmly in Peter’s, my six-inch Jimmy Choo heels kissing their way along the red carpet. Camera shutters pop and wind and strobes flash as we approach the theater entrance. Paparazzi shout, “Peter, Peter, over here!” Peter turns, obligingly, and gives a little smile, a little wave. I turn to my good side (do I have a good side?) and do the same.

  The fantasy comes to a jarring halt when somebody shoves an elbow in my back. There’s a murmur behind me. She knows the director. Sean Leeds’s friend. I edge to the left, just a little, and now I’m only a couple of feet from the production assistant. I’m about to give him my name so he can let me through the barricade when he picks up his megaphone and tells us to clear the street because a limousine is coming through.

  A limousine. It must be one of the actors. I shuffle aside with the crowd, little sputters of electricity and speculation about who’s inside the vehicle traveling from person to person. But the woman who emerges from the limousine isn’t one of the actors. She’s tall and has a head of thick, wavy yellow hair. She’s dressed in a white knit top with black skinny jeans and short, black boots. It’s Regan Moxley. My stomach lurches. What’s she doing here?

  Everyone goes wild. People applaud, whistle, shout for selfies, and a few of the men make catcalls. They think Regan is in the movie. I can’t believe this.

  “She’s not an actor!” I scream. “She reads SparkNotes!” I look around, hoping to get someone’s attention, anyone’s attention. But no one hears me.

  Regan tilts her head upward, flicking her hair as the driver of the car closes the door behind her. I watch her walk up to the production assistant, lean in, and whisper in his ear. He says something into his walkie-talkie, and soon a young woman with long, blond hair appears. I think I remember seeing her at the party. She escorts Regan down the street and into the Sugar Bowl. And that’s it. She’s in.

  I stamp my foot. Why is Regan Moxley always in the way? Why is she always trying to steal my thunder? Trying to steal Peter? I feel my blood pressure rising, but I tell myself to remain calm. Maybe I didn’t arrive in a limousine, and maybe I’m not six feet tall and wearing skinny jeans, but I’m going in there just the same way she did.

  I walk up to the production assistant. “Excuse me.” I flick back my own hair, although I suspect the effect isn’t the same. “I’m Grace Hammond. I’m a friend of Peter Brooks.” I let that sink in. “And a friend of Sean Leeds.” I pause here as well. Then I smile, hoping to indicate that even though I’m friends with these
two very important people, I myself am still a regular person, just like him.

  He scratches his neck where it looks as though he’s been bitten by a mosquito. “Yeah?”

  “I’d like to go inside the Sugar Bowl, please.”

  “Sorry,” he says. “They’re filming.” He brushes something off the front of his black I Got Crabs at Ernie’s T-shirt.

  “Yes, I know they’re filming,” I say. “But Peter told me I could drop by the set.”

  He rubs his eyebrows, which are dark and thick and almost meet in the middle. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Grace Hammond.”

  He picks up his walkie-talkie. “I need Doug.” He adjusts his sunglasses. After a moment he says, “I’ve got Grace Hammond out here. Can she go on set?”

  I feel the crowd watching me as I wait to get the word to enter. A little squawk comes through the walkie-talkie. The production assistant shakes his head at me. “Can’t do it. You’re not on the list.”

  What? How can that be? I hear a few snickers and some muttering behind me. “Can’t you just call Peter on that walkie-talkie? I’m sure he’ll tell you to send me right in.”

  “They’re filming.”

  “Yes, I realize that.” The sun is beginning to burn the back of my neck. “But Peter is a very close friend of mine. In fact, I’m…” I pause, wondering if I should give it a spin. “Well, I might almost be his girlfriend.”

  The production assistant pulls back and peers at me, his eyebrows having completely merged now. “I don’t care who you are, ma’am. The office says you’re not on the list. Sorry.”

  What is this list? And why is he calling me ma’am? I’m not a ma’am. I’ve never been a ma’am. I’m barely older than he is.

  I point toward the door of the Sugar Bowl. “But that other woman”—my lips curl with the words—“she just went in.”

  “She’s on the list.”

  “She’s on the list?”

  “Look, I’m sorry, lady. I don’t make the rules.”

  Behind me, there’s more muttering and whispering and some outright laughter. The girl who said she knew Peter Brooks can’t get in. The crowd is turning against me, relishing my downfall. Sean Leeds’s friend…they’re not letting her inside. I want to disappear, to vanish into thin air. I want somebody to beam me up, like in Star Trek. Beam me up, Scotty. Get me out of here. Now!